Henry Drummond was a Scottish evangelist, writer and lecturer. It had been his intention to reserve these lectures for mature revision, but an attempted piracy compelled him to hasten their publication, and they appeared in 1894 under the title of The Ascent of Man. Their object was to vindicate for altruism, or the disinterested care and compassion of animals for each other, an important part in effecting the survival of the fittest, a thesis previously maintained by Professor John Fiske.
